Monday, December 18, 2017

National security is hard. Let's go shopping!

If you had to guess which word from the homepage display isn't included in Fox's top story, it'd be ... aw, you peeked.

President Trump’s national security strategy, set
to be unveiled in a major address Monday afternoon, restores references
to the “jihadist” terror threat – in a tacit rebuke to the Obama-era
decision to avoid such language.

The president is expected to detail his administration’s strategy at 2 p.m. ET in Washington, D.C.

Trump is expected to discuss threats he'll deem as
"rogue regimes," like North Korea, and "revisionist powers," like Russia
and China, who aim to change the status quo.

"Apologies,"
alas, you'll have to infer from the Sad Panda Obama photo and your own
sense of the Kenyan usurper's endless "apology tours" (even though the
photo appears to be from a Newtown vigil, in which case some apologies seem rather appropriate).But notably, the document repeatedly refers to “jihadist” terror groups, in a break from the Obama administration.

Because we all know that's how the West was won, right? “The primary transnational threats Americans face are from jihadist
terrorists and transnational criminal organizations,” the document
states, according to excerpts released ahead of the speech.

Another section calls for strengthened missile defense
and homeland security, vowing to “pursue threats to their source, so
that jihadist terrorists are stopped before they ever reach our
borders.”

Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump White House adviser,
drew attention to the term in an interview Monday morning with “Fox
& Friends.”

“The political correctness of the last eight years is gone,” he said. “You haven’t seen anything like this for 20-25 years.”

No, Sebastian Gorka hasn't gone away, and no, you can't sit in if he's made to retake his qualifying exams. But there's more!

Broadly speaking, according to a senior administration official,
Trump’s doctrine has four main principles: protecting the homeland and
way of life; promoting American prosperity; demonstrating peace through
strength; and advancing American influence in an ever-competitive world.

The official said the “principled realism … takes a clear-eyed view of the threats we face.”

Interesting way to introduce the term "principled realism," don't you think? I wonder if it has anything to do with the party press's late-breaking discovery that the anarchic world is -- a competitive place! Right, Wall Street Journal?On Monday afternoon, President
Donald Trump
will give a speech formally laying out his first
national-security strategy, a document mandated by Congress. The
instrument describes an “America First” approach that outlines the new
challenges the nation faces. These are some of the highlights.

A competitive world: The strategy warns that
the U.S. faces an era of increased political, economic and military
competition and argues that a fundamental rethinking of
national-security policy is needed to maintain the U.S.’s advantages.
America’s global dominance after the Cold War “bred complacency” that
“American power would be unchallenged and self-sustaining.” The U.S.
will begin “competitive diplomacy” focused on defending American
interests ahead of other concerns.Pesky history.And in case you missed it last week, here's the Fox conclusion:

In another shift for the president who ran on an
“America First” platform, Trump’s strategy will remove an Obama
declaration that climate change is an "urgent and growing threat to our
national security."

I'm not sure which Fox is hoping for -- that we won't remember what "America First" means, or that we will.